Previous studies on horizontal outsourcing between competing duopolists emphasize cost factors, such as economies of scale and/or variable cost advantages in Cournot markets, as potential ...explanations. Our paper studies horizontal outsourcing when two competing firms engage in Bertrand competition, and highlights the important role of sole sourcing commitment. We adopt the framework of a multistage duopoly game that comprises of an incumbent and an entrant. The incumbent has the capability to make a key component in‐house, and the entrant, who is a rival of the incumbent in the downstream market, can source the component from either the incumbent or a supplier not participating in the end‐product market. We find that if the entrant commits to sole sourcing, horizontal outsourcing can occur when the incumbent has a component cost advantage or even a small cost disadvantage over the alternative supplier. Specifically, if the component cost gap is small, horizontal outsourcing may soften downstream market competition and benefit both firms at the expense of inducing higher prices for the consumers. If the incumbent has a significant cost advantage, horizontal outsourcing may lead to an increased downstream price war by expanding the total supply of end products. Without sole sourcing commitment, horizontal outsourcing occurs only when the incumbent has a cost advantage, and it always strengthens downstream price competition. By contrast, if the firms engage in downstream Cournot competition, sole sourcing commitment has no impact on the adoption of horizontal outsourcing, and the entrant sources from her rival only when the incumbent enjoys a significant cost advantage. Finally, we also study various extensions to check and confirm the robustness of our main results to key model assumptions.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework involving dependence, relationship commitment, logistics outsourcing and service quality to exhibit the roles of the ...relational factors involved in logistics outsourcing and their outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
– Based on data collected from 361 companies in Greater China, the authors use the structural equation model approach to examine the hypothesized relationships.
Findings
– Both normative and instrumental relationship commitment are necessary for third party logistics (3PL) users to cope with their goal dependence on 3PL providers. However, only normative relationship commitment is necessary when users perceive switch dependence. Normative relationship commitment also plays a more important role than instrumental relationship commitment in facilitating the adoption of 3PL logistic outsourcing. In addition, both basic and advanced outsourcing practices have a positive effect on service quality.
Originality/value
– This study contributes to both 3PL theories and practices by clarifying how relationships between 3PL users and providers in China are managed.
Purpose
– This paper aims to test the nine corollaries concerning the determinants of outsourcing relationship dimensions, strategic manoeuvres, clients’ and service providers’ evaluation regarding ...outsourcing category and outsourcing relationship types.The paper has the purpose of reviewing the concept of outsourcing in relation to FM, dealing with service providers’ performance and its effect on clients before providing a comprehensive discussion of outsourcing.
Design/methodology/approach
– A conceptual approach is adopted, suggesting that a study of outsourcing relationship between clients and service providers from these theoretical perspectives is used to develop corollaries about the relationships between the strategic manoeuvres identified and the different dimensions of outsourcing relationship. The corollaries are examined using non-parametric tests.
Findings
– The model of the facilities management (FM) outsourcing relationships presented in the paper shows performance of outsourcing services through evaluation of outsourcing categories on current and future FM contracts of clients and service providers. As a template of outsourcing relationships, the model is the context for predicting the important outsourcing categories to the future four FM outsourcing contracts, such as building maintenance, security, cleaning and catering. On prediction of those FM contracts, there is an inclination to the types of in-house and technical expertise on category of FM outsourcing relationship types from clients, whilst there is an equal inclination to the type of in-house outsourcing category from service providers.
Originality/value
– Management on outsourcing relationships between clients and service providers is now essential for effective outsourcing in FM. This paper provides an intriguing insight into how the effect of outsourcing relationships can be strategically implemented into the performance of service providers.
With the rapid development of cloud computing, more and more enterprises/individuals are starting to outsource local data to the cloud servers. However, under open networks and not fully trusted ...cloud environments, they face enormous security and privacy risks (e.g., data leakage or disclosure, data corruption or loss, and user privacy breach) when outsourcing their data to a public cloud or using their outsourced data. Recently, several studies were conducted to address these risks, and a series of solutions were proposed to enable data and privacy protection in untrusted cloud environments. To fully understand the advances and discover the research trends of this area, this survey summarizes and analyzes the state-of-the-art protection technologies. We first present security threats and requirements of an outsourcing data service to a cloud, and follow that with a high-level overview of the corresponding security technologies. We then dwell on existing protection solutions to achieve secure, dependable, and privacy-assured cloud data services including data search, data computation, data sharing, data storage, and data access. Finally, we propose open challenges and potential research directions in each category of solutions.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to understand the roles various drivers such as cost, strategy and risk play when business process outsourcing/information technology enabled services ...(BPO/ITES) firms in India outsource their information technology (IT) functions to third-party vendors. If all key drivers associated with IT outsourcing were understood, and such knowledge of those variables was incorporated into the reasons for outsourcing, there would be a greater probability of a successful outcome.
Design/methodology/approach
– A “hybrid” (quantitative and qualitative) research methodology was used to gain insight into the IT-outsourcing paradigm by BPO/ITES firms in India. A structured questionnaire related to IT-outsourcing activities conducted from 1999 to 2010 was distributed to nine firms. The resulting data were then analyzed. In addition, two Indian BPO/ITES firms that had outsourced their IT to a third-party vendor to cut cost generously granted in-depth information into their IT-outsourcing paradigm and life cycle.
Findings
– IT outsourcing is perhaps more complicated than other types of outsourcing. Focussing purely on cost is very risky. Practitioners need to take all three drivers – cost, strategy and risk into consideration. Any degradation of services or responsibilities due to IT outsourcing would mean a very unhappy client or even loss of business.
Originality/value
– BPO/ITES firms in India tend to focus only on cost reduction from IT outsourcing without taking into consideration other equally important drivers such as strategy and risk. This paper counsels a holistic approach toward IT outsourcing for a successful outcome. In addition, an IT-outsourcing framework and guide is proposed for practitioners.
Introduction: Self-production and outsourcing are two important production strategies for manufacturers, and the production capacity and investment capacity of manufacturers and suppliers play a ...decisive role in the quality of products. This study aims to analyze the manufacturer’s best production strategy and the drivers of outsourcing in the context of quality. Methods: This study constructs production outsourcing game models for duopoly manufacturers, examines the trade-offs between self-production and outsourcing when suppliers have the ability to invest in quality, explores the requirements and implications of outsourcing and compares the differences between “one-to-one” and “one-to-many” outsourcing structures. Results: First, outsourcing can reduce the level of product quality and that a necessary condition for manufacturers’ outsourcing is a strong advantage in the supplier’s production costs. Second, duopoly manufacturers may face a prisoner’s dilemma as a result of outsourcing. Finally, compared to two independent suppliers, outsourcing to a common supplier can increase the level of product quality by exploiting the centralization effect and increase the firm’s profits when the market’s competition intensity is low. Conclusion: First, the production strategy balance of duopoly manufacturers is closely related to the outsourcing structure, production efficiency and investment efficiency. Second, duopoly manufacturers choose outsourcing may fall into the prisoner’s dilemma, and outsourcing has the risk of quality reduction.
Accounting provides around 80 % of information of any type and sort of activity of legal entity and significantly influences the decisions of accounting information users. The accountant profession, ...which had faced many challenges over the past few years, now is proving to be no exception. The article looks at both theory and practice and attempts to determine and understand problematic issues about outsourcing accounting challenges. The purpose of the research is to evaluate outsourcing accounting challenges in Latvia and Lithuania. The research deployed the survey, the inductive and deductive methods, the methods of systematisation, comparison and a summary of information. Research object – companies providing outsourcing accounting services in the Republic of Latvia and the Republic of Lithuania. From the results of the research the authors have come to the following conclusions: the biggest challenges for accounting outsourcing companies of both countries are keeping up with new regulations and standards and technology developments. Both countries have quite a similar view on challenges of accounting outsourcing companies, however, Lithuanian respondents provided opinion on more significant challenges such as attracting new customers, differentiating from competition and experiencing pressure to lower fees, as Latvian respondents – emphasized challenge of keeping up with new regulations and standards.
SICS: Secure and Dynamic Middlebox Outsourcing Wang, Huazhe; Li, Xin; Wang, Yang ...
IEEE/ACM transactions on networking,
2020-Dec., 2020-12-00, Letnik:
28, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
There is an increasing trend that enterprises outsource their middlebox processing to a cloud for lower cost and easier management. However, outsourcing middleboxes brings threats to the enterprise's ...private information, including the traffic and rules of middleboxes, all of which are visible within the cloud. Existing solutions for secure middlebox outsourcing either incur significant performance overhead or do not support incremental updates. In this article, we present a secure and dynamic middlebox outsourcing framework, SICS, short for Secure In-Cloud Service. SICS encrypts each packet header and uses a label for in-cloud rule matching, which enables the cloud to perform its functionalities correctly with minimum header information leakage. Evaluation results show that SICS achieves higher throughput, faster construction and update speed, and lower resource overhead at the enterprise and in the cloud when compared with existing solutions.
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